


Undone.

by orange_crushed



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Angst, Canon Compliant, Erik has Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is too much blank space suddenly, again, like the room, the concrete cell, like all the years he- Erik takes a breath and focuses on the tacks in his shoes, the bolts in the wall. Hinges. Small things. Points and dots. At the back of the plane, he can hear Logan grumbling and playing with his lighter. Erik can feel the metal passing back and forth between Logan’s hands, but not the hands themselves. An untethered pendulum moving back and forth through air.</p><p>"Jesus," says Logan. When Erik turns around to stare at him, he puts his boots up on a thousand-dollar Napa leather chair without breaking eye contact. "Are we there yet?"</p><p>"Not quite yet," says Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undone.

On the plane there are still crumbs being ground into the carpet, strange smears of something that was very likely mashed potatoes with herbs and butter, a salisbury steak that actually resembled the beef it was formed from, the drying stain of an exceptional but not extravagant chardonnay. The air still smells rich. There were snacks in the compartments, jars of olives and sleeves of water crackers, tins that Logan kept opening and eating out of with his hands. He doesn’t have a sense of place but Erik does, Erik learned elaborate table manners so that Erik could kill people who had them, and then for a long time Erik lived down in a concrete hole. He’s not sure where that leaves him. He’s hungry. He doesn’t say anything about it. They are hurtling through the sky in Charles’s private plane, the largest and loudest possible flying bank statement, a testament to the placid, unplumbed depths of the fortune that not even Charles’s prolonged drunken sulk nor his technological excesses could begin to drain.

"Vienna sausages," Logan reads aloud, off a label. He pops the pull-tab, smiling. "I like Vienna."

Erik sits cradled in plush leather seats, uneasy and feeling every minute jolt to the fuselage, nursing a fourth glass of scotch and trying not to look at Charles’s hands, folded in his lap between moves, or trembling slightly against the armrest, fingers drumming a silent beat. He used to do that, sometimes: tap along, or hum, to songs other people were thinking of. But perhaps not any longer. Perhaps he can hear Erik’s tangled scraps of thought, or perhaps there’s nothing now, perhaps there’s emptiness, a space where Erik ought to be: seen but silent inside, like a shuttered house, the way Erik is to everyone else, the way everyone else is to Erik. Erik has been underground for so long, alone with those ragged, penned-in thoughts. It used to give him cold comfort to think that there was one thing, at least, that could penetrate concrete and glass, that could sink down below the sunlight to where Erik was, that could be listening. Something that would know. That would know everything. But apparently Erik was wrong about that, too.

Erik thinks, intensely, _look up if you can hear this_ , tap your hand against the seat. But Charles sighs and rests his chin on one hand, stares at the cooling blue light outside the window, the glinting line of ocean far below.

"Is it," Erik starts, and stops when Charles looks up, distracted, his bright eyes glassy with distance for a second, then sharpening. As if those eyes traced his features in pen, captured the line of his face and set it aside in a folder like evidence, closed the cover and locked the drawer. For a moment Erik doesn’t know: is he being read, after all? Or is it simply Charles, all the intent without the force. Erik gathers himself while Charles waits. He thought in German, mainly, while he was alone. "It’s a complete trade, then," Erik says, and sketches in the air between them, a gesture that encompasses Charles, head to knee. "The serum. Your powers for your," and he can’t finish that, not completely. "Mobility," he tries. The scotch has reached his joints, settled into his elbows, and his hand flops down onto his own armrest abortively. Charles pointedly doesn’t look down at his own legs, but at the game board between them.

"Yes," he says. His mouth is quirking upward, crooked, mocking. "It giveth, and it takes."

"Ah," says Erik. And then, after a moment, voice lowered: "You really don’t know what I’m thinking?"

"Did I ever?" says Charles. He slides his bishop into a square across from Erik’s queen.

"You don’t want to do that," Erik says.

"Too late," Charles says. "Your move." Erik strikes, as he must. But in picking up the bishop he sees the pattern in it, the placement which has suddenly opened. Charles will advance, and the game will be in stalemate. An impossible draw. "It seems the playing field was a little too fair," Charles says, when Erik sets his piece down with a sigh. Charles picks up his own king, rolls it between his fingers. He is a bad winner, in that he pretends to be a good one: overmuch graciousness always gave him away. He loses better. That was one of his many surprises. But he’s smiling a little now, tentative, charming. Erik can see it, just a glimpse: the pretty, priggish Oxford boy emerging from beneath the coarsened shell. It’s a bit like a mirage. It makes Erik bold, or only drunker. Charles keeps looking at him.

"Is this metaphor for my benefit?" Erik says, too lightly. "Ever the teacher." But he knows, he sees the mistake as he makes it, as the smile across from him fades down. Erik wants to draw the words back into his mouth, but there is nothing to clutch at, to reel in.

"No," Charles says. "There’s no lesson here."

Charles excuses himself with perfect politeness, gets up and goes to the cockpit, talks to Hank in that infuriatingly reasonable quiet tone. Erik watches him become extremely interested in the altitude and flight path, watches him pretend that Erik is not behind him, not there at all. Erik thinks, _fuck you_ , fuck you Charles Xavier, _fuck you_ , with such viciousness he startles even himself, but Charles doesn’t turn around, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t gasp or clench his hands around the seat back. Doesn’t look back with hatred in his eyes, or sadness, or even recognition. Doesn’t hear a goddamn thing. Erik feels something lift off him, release him, as if there was a breath that he was holding, something heavy in his hand that’s slipped away. He is conscious of the space below the plane, the air. His bones feel hollow. He is at the edge of rage, or of vast nothingness, of disappearance. There is too much blank space suddenly, again, like the room, the concrete cell, like all the years he- Erik takes a breath and focuses on the tacks in his shoes, the bolts in the wall. Hinges. Small things. Points and dots. At the back of the plane, he can hear Logan grumbling and playing with his lighter. Erik can feel the metal passing back and forth between Logan’s hands, but not the hands themselves. An untethered pendulum moving back and forth through air.

"Jesus," says Logan. When Erik turns around to stare at him, he puts his boots up on a thousand-dollar Napa leather chair without breaking eye contact. "Are we there yet?"

"Not quite yet," says Charles.

 

 

 

 

It always made Erik smile, how little they feared Charles. Charles! In his slim grey jackets and sweater vests, fingers steepled over his knee, asking dull questions for the benefit of everyone else in the room. Perhaps the threat was too abstract. Everyone was afraid of Erik, afraid of the guns he could wrench from their hands and the wire he could strip and lash. Nobody was ever afraid of Charles. Not even Erik, who in his innermost heart has always been waiting for destruction, like a train. Perhaps you can be afraid of the things you want, but only crookedly, only wrong. He is ready for erasure, he is ready for white noise, ready to meet the atom. He longs for it a little, even though he has spent all his life scrabbling up the side of his cage, living one more day at a time by the skin of his fingertips. Paradox. Contradiction. He has a lot of those. But the argyle socks and kindness didn’t fool Erik, didn’t hide anything, only made it plainer and simpler, lovelier. There is a thing inside of Charles, a hall of mirrors bright and shattering. His power is not a lightning bolt but a great wave, one that could wash off the face of the world, leave it smooth and shining and featureless. Erik has had a lot of time to think about it. 

Charles makes Erik lift the scaffolding up and then Charles lets go, he slips the reins off and Erik is master of himself again, bare-headed and standing in the ragged ruts of grass. Charles leans on Hank and bleeds and doesn’t say anything. 

"If you let them have me, I’m as good as dead," Erik says, finally. Charles’s eyes take him in and this time Erik can feel it, the hand that runs along his ridges inside, the mind that moves like water through his own, finding cracks. Charles doesn’t try to hide himself. He says an inane goodbye out loud but inside, a stronger voice is speaking. _Go_ , it says. And then, a whisper. Like Charles couldn’t help it slipping out. _I’m not done with you_. Erik’s knees go weak, his breath tight, at the force of it. He stays standing. There is a weight against his heart again, like a rock. Like an ingot. It throbs and tugs at him. It’s real, and heavy, and as he rises Erik holds one hand against his ribs, as if he could cup it, feel the place where he isn’t entirely empty, where something rests. He goes, feeling Charles slide off his back like raindrops. 

A game in stalemate never really has to end.

 

 

.


End file.
